Emergency Medical Dad

LII: mid august, present

JESSIE

 Jay's head was in my lap when I got the email. He was asleep, hot off a morning shift on a Saturday, three weeks left before he has to head home. I had the laptop off to the side, one hand on the keyboard, one hand gently playing with his hair. Joey and Linda had taken Connor on somewhat of a day trip to go see the art installation that was taking place on the street a few over from Joey's office. So all was quiet until I let out a small gasp.

Jorgen, being Jorgen, blinked awake immediately, looking up at me, bleary but present.

"You okay?" He manages, an extra gravel on his voice that I'd spend more time fumbling over if I wasn't fully distracted.

"Um, yeah, I-" I clear my throat. "Look at this." I set it down next to his head and he props himself up on an elbow to read.

"Holy shit," he mumbles, squinting over his bleary eyes. "Holy shit."

My hand on his hair has fallen to a spot on his upper ribs, warmth radiating off his body, "she must not have wanted her reputation-"

He doesn't let me finish, instead half-rolling and crushing me in a hug. He's laughing, it hits me after a second. He's laughing.

It coerces a giggle out of me, holding his back and fumbling to set the computer on the living room table so I've got two hands, the other knotting up in his hair.

"Fuck," he mumbles into my shoulder. "He's going back to St. B's. We don't have to switch schools. Jess..."

"Jay," I let him pull back a little, just for a second of eye contact that ends in a harder hug and more laughing, falling to the side, tangled up in each other. The tension in his shoulders melts into thin air, mine following shortly after, a moment of relief as our deadline runs toward us.

"Oh my gosh," I manage, my face against his neck. "She paid for it, we're- she paid for it."

He pulls back again, disbelief on his features, "she... God, Jess, your Mom is awful but her need to upkeep her reputation is saving our asses."

"She's gonna want something back," I manage, realizing the implications of what's happening.

"I don't care," he says. "I- it's- what would she even want?"

"I'm not sure."

"Ten thousand dollars," he puts a hand on the side of my head. "That's ten thousand dollars we don't have to find between now and a week from now."

"I know," I breathe. "But... you don't know my Mom."

"No, I don't, but Jess, I- ten thousand dollars."

I wrap my hands up around his neck, tugging him back into the hug. I can tell he doesn't quite understand what I've just realized, doesn't really know what I mean by payback.

I wait through the rest of the day, listening to what Connor saw over dinner, threading my fingers through Jorgen's overgrown undercut while he does dishes, going to bed early just to wake again at midnight to tell him good luck on his shift, seeing him again at the crack of dawn, tuckered out and sweaty from a long round of CPR. I spend the day working with Connor on the small summer project he had to do that I'd let him put off.

I make it until Monday morning, then I watch a phone call ring all the way through, letting it go to voicemail.

Then it burns like a stick of dynamite in my pocket until I stumble back in the door at the end of the day, finding Jay and Connor in the basement halfway through what looks like a complex lego build, instructions displayed up on the T.V screen down there, clearly a pattern he doesn't have the set for, considering the clashing colors on the build.